The invention relates to a semiconductor device having a semiconductor body which is provided with an insulating layer adjoining the semiconductor body and a conductor track on top of the insulating layer with the conductor track being covered by an insulating layer which is embedded in an envelope made of synthetic material.
A semiconductor device of the type described in the opening paragraph is known from Japanese patent Application 55-132014, in which it is described that the conductor track is often thicker than the insulating layer covering that track. Now if the semiconductor device is exposed to changing temperatures, mechanical strain will occur in the device owing to the difference in coefficient of expansion of the synthetic material of the envelope and the rest of the semiconductor device and owing to the setting and shrinking of the synthetic material. This causes fractures in the insulating layer covering the conductor track and displacement of the conductor track.
The remedy recommended was to choose the thickness of the insulating layer covering the track to be greater than the thickness of the conductor track.
Now that semiconductor devices have become increasingly more complicated, this measure turns out to be insufficient in practice in many cases, especially when conductor tracks are present at various levels.
In that case the problem often occurs that hair cracks are formed in the insulating layer or layers covering the conductor tracks, which results in an attack on the conductor tracks and failure of the semiconductor device.